A Pair of Dummies
by UnmovingGreatLibrary
Summary: Chie and Yukiko each secretly try to get some solo training time inside the TV... but in a landscape where everything is shaped by human thoughts, it's *really* hard to keep a secret.


_CLANG._

At the end of a roundhouse kick, Chie's foot connected solidly with her opponent, some kind of lumbering stone knight. It was a brutal strike, and the shadow's stomach exploded outward away from the point of impact, showering the walkways around her with stone. The decapitated torso collapsed down onto the feet below, and as the two halves shattered into rubble, they were already roiling with black bubbles and sublimating into fog.

Another shadow, a skittering table, was already crawling over the remains of the first. A single snap kick to one thin leg was enough to make the thing flinch, for long enough for Chie to leap up and kick off of the mask that served as the thing's face. She only got a few meters of air out of the jump, but put the entire force of her descent into a single foot and slammed it down on top of the thing. The shadow's legs collapsed under it, and its top shattered into dozens of pieces against the ground. Soon enough, they were drifting up past her in an oily, chill fog.

"Pshew." Chie wiped her forehead with the back of a hand and surveyed the fading carnage around her. "Bet none of you saw _that_ coming, huh?" She hauled one foot back and punted one of the masks of the recently-deceased shadows. The thing flew out into the foggy void and disappeared.

The TV world wasn't so bad, now that she'd gotten used to it. She could still get lost if she ventured too far from the entrance, but she'd been taking these little training trips often enough to get a feel for the local geography. The group... _had_ agreed that nobody would go in alone, but hey—if nobody else was in here, that meant that none of them could catch her breaking the rule, right?

Besides, it was Yu who had proposed the rule. Yu, who didn't _need_ the extra training. Yu, who had defeated his own shadow alone. Yu, who hadn't had to sit and watch as a screwed-up mockery of himself told everybody his deepest secrets.

But. But. She'd conquered that. Yeah. She was going to change those urges, for Yukiko to be a passive, helpless thing for her to protect, into something better. She was going to protect people in earnest now. And for that, she needed to become stronger.

Chie crouched down and picked up her discarded backpack of supplies, then dug inside. Her hand brushed smooth plastic, and she pulled out her water bottle. As she gulped it down, she looked back over the path she'd taken to get here. The shadows were long gone, but there were other signs of her passage. After a dozen training trips, the area had started molding itself to reflect her mindset.

She only ever got _this_ far when she'd been fighting for at least an hour, so the scenery in this area was... well, it was some kind of jumbled kung-fu movie hallucination. The smells of sweat and blood were layered over the mind-numbingly heavy antiseptic smell of the fog. The floor was an uneven, rolling surface of tatami mats. In the places where there were walls, they jutted outward at varying angles, covered with heavy gongs and hanging scrolls. The edges of the walkways were lined with ornate censers, of the exact style she remembered from _Burning Fists of Shaolin_. She was not afraid to say that her subconscious had _pre_tty darn good taste in martial arts flicks.

It was the farthest she'd ever gotten, she thought... not that distance seemed to mean much in here. Enough for one day, she supposed. She should _probably_ head back if she was going to do that reading for math class tonight... or, more likely, get to bed early enough that she could hopefully wake up, meet Yu on the way to school, and copy his notes before class started.

With that foolproof plan in mind, Chie hefted her bag back onto her back and set off down the uneven walkway toward home.

* * *

_FWOOSH_.

A wave of hot air blasted out from the attack, making Yukiko's hair and clothes sway in the sudden breeze, but she was used to it by now. She looked unflinchingly forward at the shadow—some kind of orb with a mouth and an oversized tongue—as the flames finished washing over it. It used to be painted in clownishly bright colors, but now its whole side was blackened with scorch marks. The thing shuddered once in the air, then crashed to the ground. The now-brittle blackened areas caved inward under its own weight, and soon it was melting into black vapor.

Yukiko gave a sigh of relief, then opened her fan and started cooling her face with it. The TV world wasn't so bad, now that she'd gotten used to it. She'd only been here a few times, but parts of it... resonated with her. She could feel the distant landmark of that castle, built out of her regrets and repressed desires, and in a way, it served to keep her oriented. Every time she came here, she had flashbacks to that first time, waking up in the strange maze of her own twisted memories... and her shadow, that pathetic thing that had begged for a savior.

But. But. She had conquered that. She'd owned up to her discomfort at having her entire future planned for her, and she was going to use that to motivate herself to be somebody better. She was going to stand on her own two feet and make her own decisions now. And for that, she needed to become stronger.

Days like this were nice for it. The inn's business was just slow enough that she could sneak out for a few hours. Chie had said that she was going to be busy after school, Yu was doing something with his uncle, Kanji was still recovering, and Yosuke was taking Teddie on a grand tour of Inaba. None of them would ever need to know that she'd snuck in a little solo training time.

Today had been a good practice session. Yukiko hadn't strayed far from the entrance, but she'd worked her way in a broad circle around it, and killed at least twenty shadows in the process. The area around her still had that strange abandoned-lot-TV-studio look that a lot of the world did, still unshaped by human presences. It was less creepy than Kanji's bathhouse had been, at least. That had just felt like she was peeking at the worst parts of somebody's diary. She supposed that that was what her castle had been like for everybody else.

Yukiko turned back toward the entrance to head home, with her feet tapping out a rhythm on the metal walkway that was the flooring in this area. The noise made her hurry up: The weird void around her was otherwise silent, and even though the heavy fog stifled the sound, it still made her feel precariously obvious.

She was two-thirds of the way to the entrance before another sound pierced the fog: Something wet and heavy, followed by a light shudder that ran through the walkway. Yukiko turned around, and behind her...

Behind her, one of the doors lining the walkway had opened up, revealing that strange red-black pattern that every portal seemed to show in here. One shadow had already crawled out of it, and was starting to shape its putty-like inchoate form into something more tangible. Behind that, she could already see another black hand reaching out of the doorway.

Yukiko glanced from the doorway to the entrance. It was only a hundred meters or so back to the stack of televisions that served as the gateway into this place. The shoes that were part of her uniform weren't the best for it, but if she ran, she just might make it. Yukiko took off at a sprint, no longer caring about the loud clanks of her heels against the metal walkway. She looked back over her shoulder, and she could already see the first shadow chasing after her: it had taken the shape of one of those ravens with a lantern, and it was catching up fast.

She was only a dozen or so meters from the exit when that bird shrieked and dived at her. That heavy lantern swung right at her head, and she only barely managed to dodge it by ducking aside. Right, no more running. Yukiko whirled around to face the shadow and snapped her fan open. Energy coursed through her as she imposed her will on the malleable world around her, and a blast of fire erupted in the air.

* * *

The walks back were always weird. On her trips outward and into the fog, Chie was usually too busy fighting to pay much attention to the surroundings. On the way back, though, she had nothing to do _but_ look at whatever weird architecture her subconscious had erected. Further out, yeah, it was the fighting stuff. Chie wasn't much of a psychologist, but she figured that that made sense—she usually _was_ picturing herself as some kind of kung-fu movie heroine by the time that she got that far.

Closer to the entrance, though, things got... weird. Not _bad_-weird. She never had messed-up stuff based on her fears like Yukiko and Kanji had after they'd been kidnapped. Because she'd already beaten her shadow, she supposed. But... it still seemed to reflect whatever she'd been thinking about when she'd first passed through. So, as she got a little closer to the entrance, the sweat-and-blood smell of the dojos faded away, to be replaced by the smell of cooking beef. _Oh, that smells so **good**_. Chie's stomach rumbled sympathetically. Fighting always did leave her hungry.

Further on, though... "She said red looks good on me." Yukiko's voice echoed out of the fog, but Chie knew that she was still all alone. She had passed this way enough times to know what to expect. This area had been just another weird TV studio jumble when she'd first come through here, but it had been right after the fight with Yukiko's shadow, and she'd been fixated on... certain _things_ that it had said. It was a bit of a self-reinforcing loop. The more the area came to reflect her memories of Yukiko, the more she _thought_ about Yukiko while passing through it.

Chie hanged her head and hurried onward, doing her best to ignore the scenery... and then, as she was finally getting close to the entrance, a flash of light refracted through the fog and lit up the entire area. Her head jerked up, and another flash drew her attention. On one of the metal walkways, a little higher up, she could just barely see a silhouette through the fog, surrounded by towering shadows. A silhouette which whipped around, with long hair and a skirt floating in the air from the motion, as a wave of fire blasted across the enemies surrounding it.

"Y-yukiko!" For a moment, Chie wondered if it was just a hallucination, a part of the weird dreamscape around her, but no. That had to be her. After hesitating for just a moment, Chie took off at a sprint.

* * *

The fight was a frenzied blur. Yukiko had brought at least seven shadows with her, and they'd almost caught up to her again by the time that Chie had dove in. The two had fallen into a defensive formation in the middle of a broader platform: Yukiko standing in the middle, dropping concussive blasts of fire on the shadows, while Chie pummeled any of them that dared get too close.

And now, the shadows were gone. Both girls slumped down to the floor, still panting from the exertion, but it was Chie who spoke up first. "Y-you aren't supposed to be in here!"

"Neither are _you_." Yukiko's hair band had gone all crooked during the fight, and she reached up to push it back into place.

"Well, no, but..." Chie trailed off, then grinned goofily. "Guess we caught each other, huh?"

"I guess we did," Yukiko admitted, with a slightly guilty-looking smirk. "But why are you here?"

"Well, I, uh... wanted to train. If the fate of Inaba rests on us, we should be our very best, y'know?" Chie balled her fists and pumped one of them in the air. "And don't tell anybody I said this, but fighting is actually _kinda_ fun."

"You sound like some kind of delinquent." Yukiko let out a strangled snicker at that, and Chie could tell that it was taking all of her willpower to stop from laughing uproariously. "I was training, too, actually. I guess this will have to be our little secret."

For some reason, hearing Yukiko phrase it like _that_ brought a blush to Chie's cheeks. "I-I... y-yeah! Our secret, just... you and me! Heh."

Several minutes passed in silence as the pair caught their breath and came down from the adrenaline rush of battle, and then Yukiko pushed herself up to standing. "Well, do you want to walk home together?"

"Yeah, sure! I've just got to head back the other way and grab my bag, and..." Halfway through the sentence, Chie remembered exactly where she'd been when she'd dropped her supplies, and her mouth clamped shut.

"Oh? I can go with you."

"Aha. Heh. Um. Noooooo. Nonononono. I-I mean..." Chie glanced back into the fog in the direction she'd come from. It was quite a walk, far enough for only the barest silhouette to be visible. "I mean! You look tired! Why don't you stay here and rest, and I'll go get it myself?"

"Chie, I'm _fine_. Besides, I'd rather not stand too close to that door. For all we know, more shadows could come out at any time." Yukiko hopped down to the slightly lower walkway that Chie had come from, then offered a hand up. "Now, let's go get your things."

* * *

Chie couldn't say no. Or, she couldn't find a good-sounding excuse to. So, she trailed behind Yukiko, with her head hanging guiltily, as she trudged toward her final judgment.

The first sign that they were getting close was the smell: strawberries and lavender. Yukiko probably didn't recognize it, but Chie instantly knew what it was. A memory flashed into her head: Her younger self, shouting, "I already checked the postings, y'know! We're in the same class!" She'd tackled Yukiko from behind then, on their first day of high school, and gotten a whiff of the girl's hair. Strawberry and lavender shampoo. Chie had used some one time when they'd had a sleepover, and it made her feel like an imposter. The stuff smelled too impossibly pretty to be wasted on her mousy hair.

Things just got worse as they continued onward. The unshaped, plain walkways of the TV world faded away to be replaced by tatami mat—but this time, it was tidy and even and, Chie knew with a sinking feeling in her chest, the exact type that was used for the floors in the Amagi Inn. The walls were replaced by cloth—red cloth, exactly like that shirt Yukiko always wore to school... and then a desk. A small bookcase. Finally, when they reached the path that Chie had walked dozens of times: a neatly-made bed, in the middle of a circular room.

They were all items that Chie knew that Yukiko would recognize. They were items from Yukiko's own bedroom, reconstructed from Chie's memories. And other, even more unmistakeable, things. Every picture in the room had been replaced with a photo of her... some of Yukiko alone, some of her hugged up against Chie, and a very few that showed, in minute detail, what Chie imagined her friend would look like naked.

Chie casually flipped one of the nude pictures face-down as she hurried past and hefted her bag up. "Welp! Got my things! Let's go!" she said, almost manically. "Gotta get home, lots of stuff to do tonight, haha!" _Like find a bridge to jump off of_. She reached out to tug Yukiko along, but the other girl was rooted to the spot.

"Chie... what... _happened_ here?" Yukiko had been looking at the scenery with disbelief, but now turned toward her.

"Ehehe. Weeeeell, I, uh, I..." Chie looked around uncertainly. A warm breeze blew through the room. This, too, she recognized. Another memory: Herself and Yukiko last year, sitting at one of the tables in front of Souzai Daigaku. They'd gone there together for croquettes to celebrate the end of exams, and afterward, sat on the hill overlooking town, enjoying the spring breeze and talking about their futures. _It's not a date_, she'd told herself the whole time. _Notadatenotadatenotadatenotadate_. "I guess it's kinda like your castle?" _More like Kanji's bathhouse, maybe_.

Yukiko looked over a wall covered in pictures. She recognized several of the scenes, if not the actual pictures. Herself and Chie working the booth at the school's cultural festival last year. Herself bent over and paralyzed with laughter. Herself in her kimono, working around the inn. She frowned. "So these are things that you're... ashamed of?" Chie wasn't sure if she sounded more hurt or accusing.

"N-n-no, I think it's more like, more like, uh!" Oh god, Yukiko was staring at a nude portrait of herself, Chie could _tell_. She fidgeted with the unfamiliar weight of the glasses on her face as she searched for _some_ way to finish that sentence, something to get her out of this. "Things that we... don't admit... maybe."

"Do you mean that...?"

Yukiko stopped mid-question, as she was cut off by a voice from the ether. "Chie... yes, she's my prince. Chie's a strong prince."

It was a voice that either of them would recognize anywhere: the voice of Yukiko's shadow, creepily polyphonic, but a bit more pleasant after being passed through the filter of Chie's memories.

Chie was now glaring at the floor, hands balled into fists and blushing profusely. This was how this place was. That's where those shadows had come from in the first place, right? They were all the things people wouldn't admit, not even to themselves. She'd sworn to be honest with herself from now on, after seeing what had nearly happened to Yukiko and Kanji. And yet, here she was, doing it again.

"Yukiko, I-I." She said it almost without thinking, and immediately regretted speaking up. How could she even finish that sentence? _CrapcrapcrapFUCKcrapcrapfuckcrapda__mn__._ Screw it, she'd wing this. "I... never... wanted to... say anything, yannow? Because you've got the inn, and, and every guy in town wants to date you, and it'd be a huge waste...!" She just grew progressively more flustered as she spoke, until she realized that Yukiko was laughing. "W-what's so funny?!"

"P-pfft. Pffahahahaha... I-I... I'm sorry!" Yukiko barely managed to force her words out between spasms of laughter, but she really did look apologetic. "Y-you were blushing so hard that you looked like a tomato!"

Chie grumbled under her breath. "I'm glad _somebody_ finds it funny..."

"And..." Yukiko briefly burst into laughter again, but seemed to be calming down now. "And you really didn't know...?!"

"K-know what?!"

Yukiko finally managed to stop laughing. "For weeks after I returned from the TV, I was afraid to talk to you. 'Chie is my prince'? 'Chie's a strong prince'?" Yukiko was the one blushing now, but she kept talking despite it. "When you didn't say anything afterward, I had thought that... that you must be disgusted with me. I might still be coming to terms with everything that my shadow said. But... part of doing that is accepting that it was true. It was... all true."

Even though Yukiko's voice was quavering by the end of the statement, she gave Chie a warm smile. Chie froze in place as she worked through all of this. "... wwwaaaaaaait. So, this whole time... _you've_ felt like... like _that_ about me and were too embarrassed to say anything, and _I_..." She couldn't quite bring herself to finish that thought.

But, judging by Yukiko's expression, she didn't have to. "Um, that would seem to be the case, yes."

"E-ehehe." Chie giggled anxiously. She still halfway felt like this had to be some kind of weird prank. "Wow. Jeez, we're really a pair of dummies, huh?"

"We really are." The two were both too overwhelmed to say anything more, left staring at the floor in contemplation, until that warm breeze blew again and stirred Yukiko back to awareness. "... We probably shouldn't stay here any longer, though. More shadows could come out at any minute." She folded her fan closed and held it behind her back, then impulsively leaned forward to press a soft kiss to the corner of Chie's lips. She was almost as surprised by the gesture as Chie was, and the two stared at each other in shock for a moment before she stammered out, "... Um. D-do you want to finish this conversation in the food court? Steak croquettes, my treat." A little calmer and more slyly, she added, "My... prince."

Chie looked half-dazed as she reached forward to take Yukiko's hand. "Th-that... sounds... _amazing_."

Yukiko gave Chie's hand a squeeze, and hand in hand, the two set out for their first date.


End file.
